Suspending Disbelief Over July 2 Mexican Election

Hopes High for Opposition Victory in Groundbreaking
Presidential Race, But Skepticism Over Fair Ballot
Abounds

* Presidential race too close to
call

* Accusations of fraud linger; PAN will protest any
PRI victory

* NAFTA relationship grants Mexico's ruling
party with impunity from any strong condemnation from
Washington

All eyes are on Mexico for Sunday's
presidential election, which could either turn out to be the
most democratic and transparent race in 71 years of
single-party domination, or a Mexican version of Fujimori's
electoral skullduggery in Peru a few weeks ago.

With
opinion polls banned (per Mexican law) as of a week before
election day, the most recent results, on average, put
leading opposition candidate Vicente Fox of the center-right
National Action Party (PAN), and the choice of the ruling
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Francisco Labastida
Ochoa, neck and neck. Trailing at a distant third was
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas of the Democratic Revolutionary Party
(PRD), with an all-important twenty percent of registered
voters still undecided.

In addition to the presidency,
all 128 Senate seats and all 500 Chamber of Deputies
positions are being contested.

High stakes and dirty
politicsNo one can predict the outcome of this
historic race, but politically speaking, everything is on
the line. In an atmosphere ripe for change, the July 2
election will test the legitimacy of a newly reformed
electoral system, the stability of the Mexican economy
(notorious for its election year jitters), the sense of fair
play of the presidential contenders and the future of
democracy in Mexico.

As the decision comes down to the
wire, candidates have pulled out all the stops in last
minute efforts to swing the undecided vote their way. The
latest reports have the PRI--well practiced at voter
manipulation - bending and breaking the rules of the game,
practicing intimidation, mudslinging and bribery, in a last
minute effort to cling to power in the changing political
tide.

Just as they ignored the blatantly rigged election
of current President Ernesto Zedillo, U.S. officials,
anxious to protect this country's political and economic
investment in its NAFTA junior partner, is prepared to cover
for the wayward ruling party through thick and thin.

This year, however, Washington would not lament a PAN
victory, given Fox's free trade economic inclinations he
learned as a Coca-Cola executive. The PRI, taking its lesson
from the international inaction over Peru, knows that if it
claims victory, even after an evidently fraudulent race,
party leaders can expect zero interference.

Modeling
Fujimori and his pretense of cooperation with U.S. policy
making, the PRI is smugly confident that, due to the
impunity it draws from NAFTA and Washington's need to
believe in Mexico's cooperation in the drug war, it can
fudge on crucial democratic principles and still label a
severely tainted win as a legitimate election victory.

Reform and regulationAlthough starting from a
very modest base, it is likely that the July 2 elections
will be the most democratic that Mexico has seen yet. Since
the scandal-plagued 1988 balloting and the equally flawed
tally of 1994, the government has spent some $1.2 billion
bolstering the electoral system in an attempt to ensure that
this vote be conducted without irregularity. State of the
art computer counters and the use of voter identification
cards should help ballots to be accurately tallied. Most
crucially, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) has been
separated from the Ministry of the Interior. Independent
and non-partisan for the first time, the IFE is charged with
the daunting task of overseeing that all aspects of the
election are truly fair.

While pulling off major
electoral fraud would be difficult if not practically
impossible, some claim the ruling PRI still exerts undue
influence in the IFE. Over 80,000 officials, putatively
selected at random from voter registration lists, and now
undergoing mandatory training procedures, will work the
115,000 polling places nationwide. Confidence in the IFE at
the federal level is relatively high, but as the
responsibility for the implementation of electoral
regulations filters down to the state and local levels, more
and more opportunity for fraud presents itself. Governors
can still influence the staffing of electoral commissions in
several states, and, in Nuevo León, the newspaper El Norte
reported that $100 can purchase a false birth certificate
and fake name with which to acquire a fraudulent voter
ID.

The enforcement arm of the IFE, the Special Prosecutor
for Electoral Crimes (FEPADE), already has won for itself
the reputation of being an inefficient institution that
lacks the staff, funds and teeth with which to investigate
and duly punish instances of electoral fraud. Due to the
void created by FEPADE's weak performance, a myriad of
sketchy electoral practices have gone unchecked by the IFE
in its mandate of overseeing the campaign.

The PRI
political machine After 71 years of political
domination, the PRI has saturated every facet of Mexican
society with its presence and has become practically
synonymous with the government. By definition, any
challenger must face the PRI Goliath on an uneven playing
field, where the odds of any contest are heavily weighted in
the incumbent's favor.

The 2000 campaign has
demonstrated once again the PRI's dependence on a home court
advantage, and the resistance of many of its self-serving
functionaries to reform. Labastida initially followed the
advice of his hired U.S. electoral advisers, who advocated a
softer campaigning style and the isolation of the most
notoriously corrupt members of the party. But with Fox
steadily gaining in the polls, Labastida abandoned this
progressive reformist strategy. In a final push for
victory, he reincorporated the old guard and authored an
anti-Fox media attack and vote-buying blitz in the age-old
style of political grandstanding that the PRI has relied on
to win seven decades of consecutive elections.

The old
dinosaurios, political bosses favoring caudillo-style
politics particularly when dealing with the rural poor, have
preyed on these isolated, undereducated voters, who are
largely ignorant of their democratic rights.

Tainted PRI
officials encourage the common public assumption that the
continuation of poverty programs and development projects is
dependent on the re-election of the PRI. According to
surveys conducted by the Dallas Morning News and the
watchdog group, Alianza Cívica, 47 percent of citizens that
receive federal assistance believe that these funds will
cease if the PRI loses the presidency.

Compra y
coacción, vote-buying and coercion, has a long and
deep-rooted history in PRI politics, but the competition of
the 2000 election has upped the ante as the watchful eye of
the IFE necessitates that the practice is carried out under
at least a guise of legitimacy. At boisterous rallies in
the form of circuses, pop concerts, or even a Mother's Day
strip show, local bosses have distributed sewing machines,
TVs, bicycles and farm tools to the desperate in exchange
for commitments to vote PRI on election day. Though
ruling-party authorities deny such accusations, repeated
reports confirm that at some if not all of these events,
voter names and registration numbers are taken, with all who
enter signing under the fine print confirming their status
as a "coordinator of political activism for the PRI." Few
know what they have signed, only that by cooperating they
are now eligible to receive handouts which otherwise are
officially claimed to be part of public programs, but
sedulously withheld from the needy until they can serve the
PRI's private interest by coercing votes at election
time.

Despite Labastida's insistent claims that he will
battle corruption, many, such as well-respected political
analysts Lorenzo Meyer and Carlos Monsivais, believe that
this style of campaigning is intrinsic to the PRI's ethos
and can only be cleansed by extirpating the party from
power.

The Mexican newspaper, Reforma, recently opened a
special line for readers to call and report instances of
vote coercion, and 590 cases were reported on Thursday
alone.

According to PAN representative, Elodira
Gutiérrez, the PRI has spent thousands of millions of
dollars on freebies that could influence as many as 7.3
million of the nation's 58.7 million voters, an extremely
significant percentage in such a tight race.

Suspicions of information tamperingThough the
professed de-regulation of the press by the government was a
crucial democratic step, it has been a slow and stubborn
process, which is still in formation.

There are still
solid concerns and some evidence that the PRI is continuing
its ancient tradition of manipulating the media through the
medium of bribes and cajolery.

For instance, in the
night of the May 26th televised debate between Labastida,
Fox, and Cardenas, Fox was declared the winner by 59 percent
of the respondents. The next morning, however, almost all
the major newspapers reported Labastida as the victor,
citing telephone pollsters either unheard of, or mainly
known as PRI loyalists.

Most recently, long-time PRI
pollster Maria de las Heras, released controversial findings
which placed Fox a full ten percentage points ahead of
Labastida - sharply contrasting with the much more modest
lead portrayed by the other pollsters - leaving many to ask
why, if this poll is as accurate as it is reported to be,
other polls have shown the margin to be so slim.

Critics
claim the PRI has used intimidation tactics to suppress
unfavorable results, and that poll results are
systematically skewed overall because many voters personally
fear the repercussions of openly acknowledging that they
intend to vote against the ruling party. In the past few
weeks, especially in the more isolated southern provinces,
press coverage has become increasingly imbalanced. Reforma
reports that 50 percent of total electoral radio coverage is
now dedicated to the PRI, more than that of all the other
leading opposition candidates combined.

A small-scale
uproar also occurred when the Ministry of the Interior at
first failed to support the IFE's claim that the institute
has the right to utilize free time made available for state
use by television and radio facilities. The media owners
had blocked its efforts to take advantage of these time
periods to educate voters about their rights. Instead of
backing the IFE as the institute expected, the government
sided with the owners, effectively delaying for weeks a
valuable campaign tool to be used against electoral fraud.

The next sexenioIf one of the losing
candidates chooses to contest the election results, or if
the IFE deems the process invalid, the resulting uncertainty
could throw Mexico into upheaval. PRI representatives have
offered assurances that if the presidency falls to the
opposition in Sunday's ballot, they will accept the results,
citing prior instances at the legislative and gubernatorial
levels where losing PRI incumbents have gracefully exited
office or permitted themselves to be removed.

On the
other side, the PAN has let it be known that, in the case of
a narrow Labastida victory, Fox's supporters will peacefully
protest the results as a loss for Mexican democracy and will
use all available legal channels to fight what they claim
would be a fraudulent win. At a recent Washington
roundtable discussion, experts cited a statistic indicating
that sixty percent of Mexicans do not believe the PRI could
win an election without using fraudulent tactics. The
opposition certainly shares that sentiment. Fox and
Cárdenas have set aside their bitter ideological dispute
long enough to launch a combined effort to detect and
publicize any instances of fraud. Fox says the goal here is
to address any "loose ends" left open by the IFE. A
declaration of PRI victory will undoubtedly lead to a
fine-toothed examination of the entire electoral process,
which could be extended for the next six months in an effort
to void the December first inauguration of another PRI
sexenio, Mexico's six-year presidential term. With so much
at stake, tensions are high.

Traditionally, economic
upheaval has accompanied the transition of power in the
final year of the sexenio. But the Mexican economy continues
to grow at an impressive rate, boasting a serviceable debt
and relatively large foreign reserves.

Many economists
have ventured that when the nation undergoes political
turnover on this occasion, its economic fundamentals will
shield it from the previously unavoidable crisis spillovers.
Yet a messy $100 billion bank bailout and the possibility of
an economic slowdown in the U.S. remain unsettling, as does
speculation that President Zedillo's first quarter
unbudgeted increase in government spending is an attempt to
boost PRI support that might overheat an already pumping
Mexican economy.

According to economist Jonathan Heath,
"skepticism about the electoral process itself and the
transition to a new government has to top the slate of
potential triggers of a crisis situation." In the end,
inspiring confidence in election results, both domestically
and internationally, is absolutely critical if Mexico is to
avoid another economic collapse.

The changing face of
MexicoThe stage may be set for a narrow PAN victory
on Sunday, despite every advantage, both legal and illegal,
that the PRI's perpetual incumbency has provided. The
opposition's strategy has been simple and, in the final
days, appears to be succeeding. Many more Mexicans remember
the PAN's slogan, "the change that you need" than that of
the PRI, "so the power serves the people."

The modest
reforms of the past five years and the hope that the economy
has finally gained stability have emboldened the population
to risk change. On Sunday, many Mexicans will vote for the
opposition by negation, desiring anything but another PRI
president. In the choice between Fox and Cárdenas, the PAN
campaign hopes that Cárdenas' supporters, once inside the
voting booth, will cast their ballots for Fox rather than
foster a split vote that would allow for another ruling
party victory.

What could tip this race one way or
another will be the twenty percent of Mexicans who remain
undecided. Knowingly, both parties have dedicated
unprecedented efforts to courting fringe groups usually
ignored by the Mexican political process. Election 2000 has
seen a dramatic shift in voter profiles. Fox has found his
strongest supporters among the younger, better educated,
urban middle class who say that any improvements they have
seen in the quality of their daily lives in recent years
have been of their own initiative and despite the PRI. Fox
also has put an eight-step offer on the table that would
increase the political representation of indigenous peoples,
and he appeared at a gay pride rally in Mexico City where he
asked for the homosexual community's support. Both
candidates have wooed the female population, calculated to
represent fifty-two percent of registered voters. No matter
which candidate wins, this election has been a victory for
minority and women's interests, which have long been
obscured under the tyranny of a PRI monopoly.

Another
new political player is the Catholic Church, suppressed in
politics since the Cristero revolution of the 1920s that was
viewed as threatening the young, anticlerical Mexican
revolutionary state from which evolved the PRI. Last month,
Pope John Paul II canonized Father Tranquilino Ubiarco, a
famous martyr for the Cristero cause, in a move that could
have serious political ramifications against the PRI. Only
legally recognized in 1992, the church has been carefully
excluded from politics, and the recent mixing of the two has
stirred volatile emotions.

Fox was fined by the IFE last
year for hoisting a banner depicting the Virgin of
Guadalupe, and last month, 50,000 Catholics marched through
Zócalo Square in Mexico City in a symbolic claim for public
space. In March, Mexican bishops composed a letter
condemning electoral fraud as a serious sin. The Fox
campaign, feeding the fire of these charges against the PRI,
widely distributed the document, encouraging a widely held
belief that the church (though they deny any political
involvement) supports the opposition. In return, Fox has
promised to maintain the strict federal anti-abortion laws
and to allow the church greater influence in education.
Today, Mexico's Catholic Church is described by scholars to
be a much more stable institution than the one that fostered
the bloody crusades of distant memory, and should be counted
on to help maintain order in Mexico's unpredictable
post-election atmosphere.

The final count down
In these final hours, there is a general sentiment
of excitement and expectation among Mexican citizens as well
as many political analysts around the world.

No matter
which candidate wins on Sunday, true competition in the race
could demonstrate great progress in Mexican democracy. No
single party is expected to hold a majority in congress,
meaning that the traditionally heavy concentration of
authority in the executive will be limited by legislative
checks, and that members of the different parties will have
to learn to work together.

A change in power could
dynamically fuel Mexico's forward momentum, achieving the
elusive hope held by millions of Mexicans, for an end to
seven decades of political, economic, and social power in
the hands of one party.

By Jennifer Landsidle, COHA
research associate

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs,
founded in 1975, is an independent, non-partisan and tax
exempt research and information organization. It has been
described on the floor of the Senate as being "one of the
nation's most respected bodies of scholars and policy
makers."

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